Underrail: The Incline Awakens

[lukaszek]

I understand that we are mainly there for the jet ski parts, but still.

and few other high q ingredients

 

[jackofshadows]

The lower crit damage hurts it though. With most fights you'd want to open up with aimed shot, and dealing only 90% of your damage hampers it a little.

By the way, aimed shot is a waste on pistol build imo, at least if you go vers i.e. max dex.

 

[Grunker]

The lower crit damage hurts it though. With most fights you'd want to open up with aimed shot, and dealing only 90% of your damage hampers it a little.

By the way, aimed shot is a waste on pistol build imo, at least if you go vers i.e. max dex.

I can 100% confirm that it's also a waste if you go Per/non-vers. I would rather have almost anything else.

Although it did make the ultimate difference in my Tchort fight as you'll recall

 

[Sykar]

Hammerer all day every day.

Wasteland Hawk and Magnum all day baby!

 

[ciox]

I very vaguely remember something about it being possible in old versions of Underrail, can't really test easily but I think you had to ctrl+click in your inventory while the pickpocket window was open, or something.

It was real btw https://steamcommunity.com/app/250520/discussions/1/135508489637321940/

 

[OSK]

Hammerer all day every day.

Wasteland Hawk and Magnum all day baby!

Fine...

.44 caliber handguns all day every day!

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Eh, unless you have a lot of dex, .44 uses too many AP for my liking.
Not being able to shoot twice with a handgun sucks.

 

[Tygrende]

The lower crit damage hurts it though. With most fights you'd want to open up with aimed shot, and dealing only 90% of your damage hampers it a little.

By the way, aimed shot is a waste on pistol build imo, at least if you go vers i.e. max dex.

I agree it kinda is a waste by itself, but it's a prerequisite for sharpshooter which together with crit power is 60% more crit damage at all times. It's a big boost, often a difference of saving 1-2 shots per enemy.

It's honestly hard to say if going vers for mech pistols is superior. 11 PER gets you 60% crit damage, 7% crit from the veteran feat, 10 spec points not spent on vers and INT can be dumped to 3 so 2 ability points saved. Also, since PER is easier to boost than DEX (1 from juice, 2 from marsh honey) your guns skill will most likely be higher than with vers. Not to mention detection. You can still get max or close to max DEX at 11 PER.

 

[Trashos]

Yeah, but INT6 allows you to take Premeditation, which makes Stasis AP-free (therefore gives you 2-3 shots more on the first turn for hard fights), and then INT7 gives you ~7.5% more damage through Gun Nut, which for a Versatility build is equivalent to another 1-2 shots/turn. So that adds up roughly to 15%-20% moar damage on first turn through INT for 4 invested ability points, which is similar to 4 points in PER in terms of damage.
(Of course PER also gives accuracy, so I am not saying that 4 INT points are as good as 4 PER points. But they are not that bad.)

On top of that Versatility builds can naturally take Gun Fu, which is an awesome feat (roughly +20% damage and +10% precision in the late game unspecced, especially combined with Hit&Run).
(EDITED in the correct numbers.)

On top of that, Versatility builds have ability points to spare for Survival Insticts for another +30% damage/turn (no crit damage feats though due to PER requirements). If a PER build wants to take SI, it has to sacrifice both INT and AG.

And don't forget the Commando belt. That's +10% Versatility out of the gate (...of the raider camp), so speccing Versatility is not a priority nowadays. You sacrifice the faster reloading of the bullet strap belt, of course.

TL:DR: Versatility builds can take Survival Insticts, Premeditation, Gun Nut, Gun Fu, Sprint, Hit&Run in the same build, and have very convenient crafting too with the high INT.

 

[Tygrende]

Of all of these I'd say 6 INT for premed to cast stasis for free is the biggest benefit, everything else is rather meh or has big trade-offs.

Gun Nut is a pretty bad feat, among the worst in the game. The damage increase is minimal, comparable to investing more into PER instead but without bonus hit chance and very unreliable because it's only upper damage. On top of that it's probably least useful on a typical pistol build because hammerers have very wide damage range to begin with, especially .44. Making it even wider is of little benefit, you will still 1-shot things if you roll high and do little if you roll low. It would be more useful on SMGs on ARs that already maxed PER but still want damage, that's very niche.

Gun-Fu sounds cool in theory, but it's situational and often not be worth capitalizing on. You usually can't afford to run up to every enemy and taking hit&run to do it is pretty big investment. This leads to the bigger problem, pistols are rather feat intensive, there's a lot of better things to take instead. This also applies to gun nut.

SI is great, there's little to argue here. You can still afford it if you go 11 PER, 16 DEX and dump all else.

Commando belt I wouldn't use ever on pistols. 11 more AP to reload is very bad for pistols, they have low mag capacity and can shoot a lot of times during bullet time. I'd take the skill penalty.

Also, if you go for vers with max DEX and also invest in AGI/INT/CON to take the various feats, you might not be able to afford 6 PER for point shot and 7 for kneecap shot. Not having kneecap in particular would suck, it's a very strong ability.

 

[lukaszek]

whenever I build for ballistic pistols I get angry due to number of feats required and having better synergies with other pistol types

 

[Trashos]

I do not want to write the full mathematical details, because I remember what happened after Turbodevil's thread on the official forums.

Gun Fu is not situational at all, you can fight almost all fights with Gun Fu. The playstyle here is that you run around with Hit&Run and kill everyone in 2 turns (first turn ending in Stasis) from melee range. There are some exceptions (eg, when the enemies are coming in waves, like when the Natives are attacking the camp), but very few.

Gun Nut is not great, but it is OK. One point in PER will give you 4% more damage and 2% more precision (so let's translate this to roughly 6% more damage), Gun Nut gives 7.5% (EDIT: It is more than that, see Mandriller's post below. ). It is an acceptable bonus if one already has INT6 or 7.
(I am assuming here that the damage distribution of weapons is Uniform, not Normal. But I have never really tested this.)

Point Shot and Kneecap Shot don't make much difference for Versatility builds. I have more than 20 shots/turn with a 9mm. Point Shot will give me one more shot, ie ~5% increase in damage. Less than what Gun Nut gives me.

Belts:
105 AP/turn with 4AP/shot for my 9mm. 1 reload per turn drops my available AP to 101 AP or 90 AP depending on belt. That's 24 shots with bullet strap belt (EDIT: can't go more than 24/turn due to magazine capacity) and 22 shots with commando, so that's a difference of ~10%.
According to my calculations, the Commando belt gives 10% damage and 5% precision to Versatility builds. Someone might want to recheck this because I did the calculation in my head one night that we had electricity outage, but I think it is correct. Therefore, it gives me what it takes away and more, assuming the build has been designed properly.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

Gun Nut is a pretty bad feat, among the worst in the game. The damage increase is minimal, comparable to investing more into PER instead but without bonus hit chance and very unreliable because it's only upper damage. On top of that it's probably least useful on a typical pistol build because hammerers have very wide damage range to begin with, especially .44. Making it even wider is of little benefit, you will still 1-shot things if you roll high and do little if you roll low. It would be more useful on SMGs on ARs that already maxed PER but still want damage, that's very niche.

Gun nut's nowhere near as bad as a lot of people say it is. On guns with wide damage ranges like vindicator/steel cat/hammerer it's around 12% more damage on average. That's a little worse than blindsiding or opportunist+suppressive fire, but it works 100% of the time vs everything and they don't, so it should be. You say it's pointless because you can still roll high or low, but by increasing the upper damage limit you're making it more likely you'll roll high and less likely you'll roll low so it's still good.
Not saying it's great and you should go to 7 int for it, but it's not even close to among the worst in the game. It's more in the same tier as nimble/paranoia/fast metabolism/weaponsmith or other feats like that, where it's good but not vital. If you're level 20 and have gotten all the important feats then yeah, maybe take it then. As long as you have 7 int. Which you probably don't. But if you do then it's there.
Its also gives you more damage than taking more perception. If you're level 30 with max guns and 3 perception then you have 143 guns skill, which means you do 200% damage. Taking increased perception feat increases that to 5 perception and 173 guns skill, so 221% damage. That's a 10% increase, so less than taking gun nut on a wide damage range weapon would get you, and that's the best case scenario. Going from 10 to 12 (or 20 to 22 if we want to be really extreme) perception gets you way less of a proportional increase. Perception's still more useful since it increases accuracy and detection and unlocks feats and dialogue options, but for pure damage gun nut is better.

so yeah don't bully gun nut please
bully burglar or ninja looter or the one that increases psi reserves or something

 

[Trashos]

Gun nut's nowhere near as bad as a lot of people say it is. On guns with wide damage ranges like vindicator/steel cat/hammerer it's around 12% more damage on average.

Oh you are right! It is even better than I thought. *Updated my journal*.

 

[Tygrende]

Gun Fu is not situational at all, you can fight almost all fights with Gun Fu. The playstyle here is that you run around with Hit&Run and kill everyone in 2 turns (first turn ending in Stasis) from melee range. There are some exceptions (eg, when the enemies are coming in waves, like when the Natives are attacking the camp), but very few.

As I said, you can run up to most/all enemies with hit&run, but at point you're paying 2 feats and 7 AGI for a moderate skill increase, possibly even not hiding behind corners to break LoS. It's a big investment and pretty low priority given how many feats pistols can take.

Gun Nut is not great, but it is OK. One point in PER will give you 4% more damage and 2% more precision (so let's translate this to roughly 6% more damage), Gun Nut gives 7.5% (EDIT: It is more than that, see Mandriller's post below. ). It is an acceptable bonus if one already has INT6 or 7.

I did some tasting, Gun Nut on a +/- 160 quality .44 hammerer will improve damage from 26-122 to 26-141. That's about 13% increase in average damage, not terrible. 1 point of PER is as you said around 4-5% increase in damage, precision is bit more tricky to quantify. I suppose for Vers build that already maxed DEX this is an alright way to increase damage, but again, so much better stuff to take before a moderate damage increase. You're still about as likely to roll really low and do nothing though, only slightly less.

Point Shot and Kneecap Shot don't make much difference for Versatility builds. I have more than 20 shots/turn with a 9mm. Point Shot will give me one more shot, ie ~5% increase in damage. Less than what Gun Nut gives me.

Point shot is not a must have for firearm pistols that's true, but with smart bonuses it will deal around twice the damage of a normal shot. Kneecap on the other hand is invalueable just for reducing enemy MP to 0. It's yet another way to disable melee enemies that will also work if they're immune or resistant to stun/incap/immobilization. The damage is pretty great too, with smart bonuses initial shot will deal about twice the damage so the bleeding wound will deal around 250% of normal shot damage. So all in all, if you let the thing live long enough to take all bleeding damage (reasonable vs. bosses), it's the equivalent of shooting 4,5 times.

Belts:
105 AP/turn with 4AP/shot for my 9mm. 1 reload per turn drops my available AP to 101 AP or 90 AP depending on belt. That's 24 shots with bullet strap belt (EDIT: can't go more than 24/turn due to magazine capacity) and 22 shots with commando, so that's a difference of ~10%.
According to my calculations, the Commando belt gives 10% damage and 5% precision to Versatility builds. Someone might want to recheck this because I did the calculation in my head one night that we had electricity outage, but I think it is correct. Therefore, it gives me what it takes away and more, assuming the build has been designed properly.

Man if you're going 9mm then Vers becomes even less attractive. All you need to reach 4 AP/shot with a rapid 9mm is 17 DEX. Base AP cost is 20, 17 DEX reduces this to 12, gunslinger to 9, 50% decrease from specced bullet time rounds down to 4. You could honestly go with only 15 DEX and use SSD for the fights that would justify needing 4 AP shots. If you're going to have SI all the time and die from a sneeze, you might as well go with 12 DEX and reach 17 with All-In+SSD. At that point a Vers build is going to have very low skill.

Now let's take a look at what happens when you can go for 11 PER and have 10 spec points to spend on something that isn't vers. Your skill is going to be slightly worse than 18 DEX vers with commando belt, but not too far off with juice+marsh honey and you do get a few shots more per turn. You're probably a few % of damage behind.

On the other hand you can pick up sharpshooter and max crit power spec for example. Vers build with crit power and hammerer is going to have only 150% crit damage bonus. 11 PER build is with sharpshooter and 10/10 crit power is going to have 265%. In total damage terms that's 250% vs. 365%. About 50% total damage increase and you should be critting nearly if not all the time with the 11 PER feat that increases crit chance by 7%, SI and/or Ambush (that also requires PER and boosts hit chance a lot by cutting evasion). Keep the measly, unreliable 13% increase from Gun Nut and similiar, conditional increase from Gun-Fu, this is much better. You have more shots, each is dealing more damage and you also get nice stuff like kneecap on top.

It's really not that clear which is better honestly, there is a lot going on in both.

 

[Trashos]

I will be back later, but for the time being, how exactly are you planning to take SI on a PER build? What are you going to sacrifice?

I love Ambush, it is great fun, great gameplay. But now THAT's situational.

 

[Trashos]

As I said, you can run up to most/all enemies with hit&run, but at point you're paying 2 feats and 7 AGI for a moderate skill increase, possibly even not hiding behind corners to break LoS. It's a big investment and pretty low priority given how many feats pistols can take.

The versatility build is not starving for feats. Special attack feats are kinda irrelevant to it. The ones that give extra attacks (Rapid Fire, Fatal Throw, PT Acceleration) depend on the specific implementation of the build, but can be taken very late if desired. They are minor boosts. I have space for Hit&Run, Pack Rat, Sprint, and find myself considering BS feats like Skinner (for extra +2% crit chance according to the wiki).

Point shot is not a must have for firearm pistols that's true, but with smart bonuses it will deal around twice the damage of a normal shot. Kneecap on the other hand is invalueable just for reducing enemy MP to 0.

I have described the playstyle of Gun Fu before. So all this matters very little to it. What matters is how many enemies you can kill within 2 turns. With the number of attacks Versatility gives, a single attack does not change the big picture.

if you're going 9mm then Vers becomes even less attractive.

In non-concept builds, I use both 9mm and 0.44. I do not like the 0.44 because of its unpredictability. How many attacks to kill this enemy? Maybe 1 (6 AP), maybe 4 (24 AP), who knows. But of course it is the most powerful pistol per AP, so it has its uses, especially against single tough enemies or when the 9mm is not cutting it.

You could honestly go with only 15 DEX and use SSD for the fights that would justify needing 4 AP shots. If you're going to have SI all the time and die from a sneeze, you might as well go with 12 DEX and reach 17 with All-In+SSD. At that point a Vers build is going to have very low skill.

We have found the true advantage of the PER build: It can sacrifice something in order to get something else, while the Versatility build cannot do that because it already has everything!

Note that the build is already at 16 AP and fights non-easy fights with eel sandwich. Practically, I could drop that to 14 AP and then use All In or eel+SSD. You are right, this is the theoretical peak of the build.
But what am I getting for all this hustle? Steadfast Aim! Wow. I guess it will push the Hammerer to 100% crit. I am not doing all that for this.

(EDIT: After some calculations, and depending on the Versatility spec investment, it turns out that piling up DEX may actually be better than Steadfast Aim. Not much difference either way. So it really isn't worth it.)

 

[Razor]

man, chem pistols with stealth and bear traps was the build I was missing back when I first played it. Get them stuck in bear traps and then plant them for infinity with acidic entanglement until they melt into a puddle of goo due to the chemical destabilization from the belt. Or just set them on fire or freeze to death. Even the slow ass gas grenades have a moment to shine as they finally build up their auras and apply contamination.

I have not given cave wizards a go, is there some school in there that synergizes with this basic pro gamer MLG strat? Didnt it have a forcefield thing to block off sections. How reliable is it in late game content?

Also is it just me or should crooked shot not be the default attack of chem pistols. I mean it does aoe damage already with the basic shot and aggros every friendly idiot who wanders into the puddles. Like I found out in the arena or many, MANY attemps of trying to "help" out Gorsky in his idiotic thunder run into the Core city hideout on dom.

 

[CHEMS]

Hammerer and hawker are the only ones worth using.

The Neo Luger is pretty good with its precision bonus. Even more so when using JHP against lightly armored opponents, when you want to make sure that you are doing enough damage for the JHP bullet to deliver its miracles.

Who cares about precision if you're pumping over 30 shots a round? What i like about pistol builds is that they don't need that shit, they're messy builds and i love them

 

[CHEMS]

normie check out John Wick ova heere

 

[Trashos]

Well, we *are* arguing over 2 great builds anyway.

In other news, I just reached lvl 30 on Oddity for the first time evah. I am finishing DC soon so it won't make any difference, but still it is a joyous occasion.

is there some school in there that synergizes with this basic pro gamer MLG strat?

You mean other than Temporal Manipulation? Temporal Manipulation synergizes with everything. I don't think that any other psi school synergizes with chemical pistols particularly well. I 'd rather keep my AP for my shots.


On the matter of hitting friendlies, well yes, avoid the acid pistol there, and cooked shot too if friendlies and enemies are close.

 

[Trashos]

normie check out John Wick ova heere

Gun Fu with Hit&Run in action:

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/r-7tsECOLYA?t=194

Why do I even have to try to convince anybody to play this.

 

[lukaszek]

people forgot about equilibrium already

 

[CHEMS]

Temporal Manipulation synergizes with everything.

It's just too temptating to slap TM on every build. Very good benefits, little to no drawbacks. But "optimizing" builds adding TM feels too cheap. I tend to avoid doing this, but goddamn it's hard.

 

[Arthandas]

Can you do anything with the "crumbled rocks" in the NW part of Old Junktown, or are they just "environmental lore" ?